The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs yesterday approved in principle an Energy Division proposal to set up a liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) bottling plant in Chittagong’s Kumira under a public-private partnership initiative.
After a meeting of the committee yesterday, State Minister for Power and Energy Nasrul Hamid told the Dhaka Tribune that the next step in the initiative would be to seek out private investors.
Finance Minister AMA Muhith also said the government had decided to set up the LPG plant in Chittagong to ease the pressure on the pipeline gas supply.
Sources in the Energy Ministry, however, claimed that the move to set up the plant comes without any survey for assessing the growth of consumer demand in the coming years.
According to the Energy Division proposal, the new LPG plant will have import facilities and storage tanks. The government has already allocated Tk22.08 crore to acquire 10 acres of land at Kumira. As per the proposal, another plant will also be set up at Tangail’s Elenga to manufacture LPG cylinders and necessary accessories.
According to the proposal, the government is supposed to allocate Tk284.41 crore to implement the project. Of the total, Tk181.60 crore will come as foreign currency while the working capital is estimated at Tk78.10 crore.
The demand for LPG increased by 60% in the last couple of years since the government suspended new gas connections to households in July 2010. The government, however, started giving new gas connections to businesses last year.